Saint Stanislaus Papczynski Selected Writings

555 part v: daily meditations friends (cf. Jn 19:25-26), and, O my soul, also pour forth your own most abundant ones, because Christ suffered for your sins, and the Mother along with His disciples and His intimate friends suffered unbearable pains for your sake. 10. FRIDAY EVENING On the location and internal and external punishments of hell. 1. If you want to know what hell is and what it is like; picture in your mind a very deep underground abyss, located at the very center of the earthly globe and filled up with different kinds of punishments. But among others, imagine two regions established there: one of inextinguishable fire, and the other of unbearable cold. And imagine in spirit, that you see souls like very dense sparks flying at a great speed from the flames over into the cold, whereas from there, they fly like dense snow or frozen hail back into the flames. How painful must be this punishment, whose peculiarity changes so completely and so quickly, so that at one moment the souls glow in the flames just like the fiery iron, and then suddenly congeal like ice in the cold. Ah! I implore you, try to overcome your spiritual coldness already here, lest you suffer the infernal one forever! Try to subdue by serious mortifications the flames of furious anger and the urge of passionate lust, lest you be punished with those untamed flames. [f.182v] 2. Examine with your mind the remaining external punishments of hell. The relentlessly burning fire that generates very little light and yet is so strong that it penetrates even souls, which are incorporeal. The various attributes of this fire are, in fact, so adjusted that it does not reduce human body parts; and we see after the general judgment is carried into effect that, although the fire continues to burn, yet the same bodies are being burned here. Note the palpable darkness, bringing about everlasting night; the unbearable stench of the most offensive foul smells, which

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